


[over]head

by bloodwork



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Abuse, Consensual Violence, F/F, F/M, M/M, Macro/Micro, Masochism, Multi, Non-Consensual Violence, Polyamory, Power Play, Sadism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-23 04:42:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20334247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodwork/pseuds/bloodwork
Summary: Porter Gage and his terrible, awful, no-good, very-bad mistake.





	1. twenty-five feet tall.

**Author's Note:**

> (comes back after like a six-month hiatus) (immediately posts porn) lol

When Porter Gage had recruited her for the position of the new Overboss, he hadn’t considered that she might be even more dangerous than Colter.

It was a preposterous thought. A girl that looked like she could blow away with the wind, a girl that was probably riddled with radiation like everyone else in this blasted landscape. She hadn’t even had power armor on, for G-d’s sake. A girl with no power armor going up against Colter, who had tricked his out with that electrical field he’d been so prepared to brief her on. He hadn’t even gotten a sentence in, barely even mentioned the armor before she held one hand up to silence him (and he’d kept _ that _ in mind, certainly, because how dare some little wasteland bitch think she had the authority to shut him up) and told him that she had it covered and didn’t need to hear a word more.

_ Well, _ he thought, _ if she wants to go out there and get herself killed, then she can damn well go right ahead. _ After all, there was no shortage of gullible wastelanders, as Harvey had proved time and time again.

But she hadn’t gotten herself killed. She’d strolled confidently into the ring, staring Colter in the eye the entire time, a smirk playing on her lips that he could see every time the lights washed across her. He remembered thinking, despite her attitude, it was a shame that she was going to die. He’d have liked to bring her to a back room before the fight, maybe, show her how raiders could do it. Give her the last good fuck she’d ever have.

He’d watched, or half-watched, anyway, because he knew how this would go, from behind the safety of the security door. He’d just lit up and was mostly keeping track out of the corner of his eye when Colter rushed her, and he guessed that was pretty much the end for her, because he hadn’t even given her the low-down on the Thirst Zapper. Colter was a nanosecond from hitting her full-force with the brunt of his electrified armor and sizzling her to a crisp when the wastelander reached out towards him in what he figured was a futile attempt, a last desperate and kind of pitiful gesture to save her skin.

And Colter vanished.

Gage did a double-take, because how did you _ not _ do a double-take at something like that? For a moment, he thought maybe it was just the lighting of the arena, that his eyes were playing tricks on him, that any second he’d see Colter a few feet away, dazed from whatever the wastelander had pulled — though he couldn’t think of what the hell she must have done to escape him when all she’d done was reached her hand out towards him — but the longer he looked through the glass windows of the briefing room, the more obvious it became that Colter was . . . _ gone. _ Somehow.

Once the audience realized what had happened (well, no one knew what had _ happened _ , but once they realized that Colter had fucking disappeared from the arena), their shouts for the fight became a cacophony of confusion. He could see them all looking at each other, trying to figure out if they should applaud? Cheer? Scream? What was the proper reaction to something like this? And it wasn’t like the wastelander was giving them any hints. She stood there triumphantly, hands on her hips, that same smirk on her face as she’d had when she entered the arena, but there was no way that she’d just defeated someone like Colter by reaching her hand out towards him. There were a lot of strange and fucked-up things in this world, but Gage refused to believe something like instant teleportation or disintegration or _ whatever _ had happened. He hadn’t become second-in-command by being gullible.

But the longer they all stood there, watching, waiting, expecting Colter to show up any time now, the more apparent it became that that wasn’t going to happen.

The wastelander caught his eye and gave a gesture with her head and hands, like, _ Hello? Hellooooo? I took care of your ‘crappy Overboss’ problem for you! You could start reacting! _ But he refused to believe it was this easy. Hell, even if he’d wanted to be Overboss for some insane reason — and he knew the secret to disabling the power armor — it’d still take him a good ten or fifteen minutes, probably more, to bring Colter down.

But Colter wasn’t reappearing.

And the longer everyone stood here, the more annoyed the wastelander was getting. The wastelander who looked confident that the Overboss wasn’t coming back, not now, not ever.

He knew she could see the confused look on his face. He knew that _ she _ knew this sort of thing wasn’t possible, whatever it was that she’d done. She motioned for him to come out and join her, and though distrust ran deep in raider circles, and he wasn’t fond of the idea of Colter reappearing somehow and him becoming the accidental target of a misplaced body slam or something, there wasn’t much else he could do. He opened the door and made his way across the arena to her. And, thankfully, their Overboss didn’t appear out of thin air and send him into next Tuesday, so apparently that hadn’t been the intent of getting Gage out here.

“You mind explainin’ what the hell’s goin’ on here?” he asked, eyes narrowed. More than ever he was aware of how he towered over her. How the fuck had this tiny shrimp bested Colter without a damn word of his advice, in less than ten seconds?

The wastelander rolled her eyes. “What does it look like? Colter won’t be a problem anymore.”

“You _ know _ what I mean.”

She had to. She _ had _ to know people didn’t just vanish into thin air.

The wastelander narrowed her eyes, then, in the first display of actual power she’d shown since he’d met her, and said, “I’m your new Overboss, and you’re going to stop fucking questioning me unless you want to end up in the hell that Colter is currently experiencing.”

He could have called her bluff. Most of the other raiders would have. Raiders weren’t known for backing down from a fight, especially one started by a non-raider from the outside. Hell, intimidating others, being feared by the general population, was their entire _ philosophy. _

But he had just seen her dispose of Colter without so much as a blink, and a twist in his gut was telling him not to test her. That the hell that she spoke of was real, and that she’d have no trouble sending him to it.

“Okay,” he finally acceded, “what’s the plan, Overboss?”

The grin that cut across her face was nothing short of terrifying.

* * *

This was how Gage ended up outside the patio of the Fizztop Grille, rehearsing what to say over and over again, and none of the sentences he could put together sounded like they’d do anything other than earn him that vitriolic look she’d given him that night in the Gauntlet’s arena. Because they all sounded like they were undermining her, or otherwise insinuating that he knew better than her what their next step should be — which he _ did _, of course, because he’d lived here for years, but she didn’t give a fuck about that, or any of these sentences he was contemplating saying, he was sure.

He guessed that meant the best course of action was just to go for it. To play it by ear. It unnerved him, because that wasn’t how he’d wanted this exchange of power to go. He’d wanted to be pulling the strings the whole way through. But it didn’t seem like that was going to be possible with—

Was that _ moaning _ coming from the other side of the double doors?

Oh, never mind, this was delicious. Not just in a sexual sense, though he could feel himself starting to get a little hard underneath his layers of armor. If he could walk in on her in a vulnerable position — like, say, masturbating — he could get the one-up on her. She’d shriek, be embarrassed as hell, gather her clothes and scream at him to get out, and while he would obey her demand, she’d be mortified. She wouldn’t be able to look him in the face ever again. He’d have the upper hand by default. And maybe get a nice peek at that body while he was at it.

Trying to hide his grin, he pushed open the door and sauntered in, the words already rolling off his lips, the surprise and following amusement in queue on his face in that order.

“Hey, Overboss, I—”

But the pause wasn’t the scripted one he’d planned.

Because he was legitimately surprised, and by something he never could have predicted. Not in his wildest dreams. Just like when she’d “taken care” of Colter, he found himself at a loss for words, except that this was even worse than that, because back then he hadn’t known _ what _ had happened. 

Now, he was staring at his new Overboss, who was definitely masturbating, like he’d thought, but was doing it while more than twice the size of a deathclaw.

She was more or less crammed into the Grille’s patio, the way one could only be if they had previously been the size of a human and had expanded inside the room. Shelves and appliances were pushed against the wall. The Overboss’s feet were positioned just shy of the windows on the west side of the patio, while she was so large that her shoulders and head were shoved up against the east wall, some of the appliances there digging a bit into her body, though she was so lost in the throes of her ecstasy that she didn’t seem to care.

Gage had seen a lot of strange things in this world. But this, without a doubt, took the fucking cake.

What was even the precedent for something like this? What was he supposed to do next, other than to stand here and stare with his mouth open like the world’s most strangely dressed fish? She knew he was there — her eyes had drifted to him. One side of her mouth lifted up in a smirk, but she didn’t stop touching herself. One enormous hand was positioned at her crotch, swirling two fingers around her labia sensually, slowly, while the other grasped gently but with an air of purpose at one of her breasts, the flesh there sponging out between her fingers. It was the sort of display he’d have expected to see in porn but knew was unlikely that women actually touched themselves with this sort of focus on the voyeur.

Had she _ known _ he was coming? Like, from the very start? Had she laid down and started this entire session with the assumption that he would interrupt her halfway through?

He was very concerned at the implication, because if she had known he was coming, if she had set all of this up with the intent to subvert his would-be manipulation and cause _ him _ to be the shell-shocked, wide-eyed party instead of her . . .

If she’d read him _ that _ well, then she was definitely not going to be the easy fucking conquest he had hoped. Most notably because she was several steps ahead of him, when Gage prided himself on being a step ahead of everyone else. She was the only one who’d bested him like this. Not even Overbosses were supposed to be exempt from his preemptive planning.

But none of the Overbosses had had this . . . whatever it was. Mutation? Ability? He had no idea.

“Porter, darling,” the wastelander hummed, her voice still feminine in tone but with the timbre of a bass that rattled the windows. Just the slightest bit, but enough for him to notice, and enough for him to be alarmed. She wasn’t even looking at him anymore. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling as she continued to go to town on herself. “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to show up.”

She’d known. Shit. She really was a few steps ahead of him.

So, this ended now. With the reflexes he’d been honing for as long as he could remember, he slung his handmade rifle out from behind his back and took aim at the wastelander’s brain. No matter how big she was, if he could get enough shots in her temple, she’d die just like anyone else.

(He hoped.)

But he didn’t get a chance to find out. Quicker than any creature that size had the right to be, she extended her hand and caught his rifle between her index finger and thumb, lifting it out of his arms as if he was no more than an infant, his tight grip on it seemingly meaningless. She deposited it on her other side, where she’d be able to stop him long before he made it over or around her, and then met his eyes again, grinning that predatory grin.

Gage was no idiot. He knew he was really, truly fucked. His knees began to wobble, and it was all he could do to keep himself upright.

Which, in the end, was of no help, since she once more reached her hand out, but this time, instead of grabbing the rifle, all five of her fingers closed around Porter Gage, whose relatively good luck had finally run out.


	2. reverse multiplication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can i offer you some porn in this trying time

He woke up hating the fact that he’d woken up, because that meant that he’d passed out, which was embarrassing as hell, and not at all the image that he wanted to put across. Though, it didn’t really matter what kind of image he’d been curating, did it? The wastelander had destroyed any chance he had of intimidating her.

He groaned and pushed himself up from the ground he was laying on. How long had he been out? It didn’t even look like he was still in the Fizztop Grille. His surroundings suggested that he was instead lying on the ground outside Nuka-World, maybe in one of the parking lots. Gravel was scattered around; he could feel the imprint of it on his cheek, where he’d had it pressed against the ground. He raised his hand to wipe it off, but as he did so, he caught sight of something that froze him in his tracks.

The wastelander was there, watching him, a lazy smile on her face, supporting her head with her hand, her chin fitting just so into her palm, white hair framing her face in a way that would be sexy if she wasn’t so goddamn terrifying. The fact that she was there wasn’t the thing that froze him, though. It was the fact that she was a fucking monolith.

Before he’d passed out, she hadn’t been anywhere near this big. If this version of her and the previous version of her had been in the same room, this version of her would have been able to hold the previous one in her palm. She was so big that her head could have scraped the stars.

Or, rather, it wasn’t _her_ that was _big_. He was realizing that as he looked around the room frantically, because that’s what it was, a room, not outside, not in the parking lot, not outside of Nuka-World. He was still in the room he’d passed out in, except that he was … well, if the wastelander was human-sized, he would estimate his size at … ant-size? It was difficult to tell, with her that far away, at least from his perspective. She likely wasn’t any more than a foot away, but to him she looked like she was on the horizon.

And he wasn’t alone, he noticed as he took in his surroundings. About twenty feet away, on his scale, was another dark shape, someone that hadn’t woken up yet. Someone that looked familiar …

“Rise and shine, Porter, darling,” said the wastelander from above him. If he’d thought the bass of her voice shook the windows before, this time, he could feel it in his bones. He could still understand her, and there wasn’t any temporal displacement, but he felt her voice everywhere.

His knuckles were white from digging his fingers into his palms. He pushed them against the ground and stood up to face her. Against his better judgment, because he couldn’t think of anything worse than backing down without a fight, he let loose the colorful words he had been wanting to call her ever since he recruited her. Every swear word he knew and some he didn’t know he knew. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping would happen — maybe that she was still a girl somewhere inside, and that being called all of those things would upset her, or maybe he just needed to get his aggression out because he was so full of it that it felt like he was choking on the acidic vitriol.

But the expression on her face wasn’t distress or humiliation. Instead, it was amusement.

“You sound so cute down there,” she sing-songed. “I’m sure you think you’re really giving me a piece of your mind, but your voice is so high-pitched I can’t understand a word you’re saying, darling.”

Gage stopped mid-shout.

She couldn’t even hear him? The only sound he was making to her was a mousy, pathetic squeak?

Oh, _fuck._

It wasn’t that he was afraid of her retaliation. She’d shown so far that she couldn’t care less about his threats. Even if he spat at her that he wanted to slit her throat, to choke her, to take her whether she wanted him to or not, it wouldn’t bother her. She held his life quite literally in her hands. It was moreso that this was the first time in his life he’d found himself with literally no options anywhere he turned. Anything she wanted to do to him, she could do with no effort. Not even running, a last-ditch effort to save himself, because Raiders, at least Nuka-World Raiders, did not run away from a fight, could save him in this situation.

Porter Gage, who always had a plan for everything, was completely and totally powerless.

And the wastelander knew it.

“I see you understand your dilemma,” she said, smiling lazily. She could afford to be lazy. Her prey was right here in front of her, and it couldn’t do a single thing to escape her. “Are you going to be a good boy for me, Porter Gage?”

“Fuck you,” he said, but it was a mutter, despite her not being able to hear him anyway. The fight hadn’t gone out of him — his mind was working a thousand miles an hour, running through plans he’d already decided weren’t going to work, just in case he missed something. But it sure as hell wasn’t nearly as active. It was hibernating, understanding that there was nothing he could do, so it was best for him to conserve it until he saw an opening.

“I don’t need to hear you to know what you said.” The wastelander brought her finger into the enclosed area he was in and poked him gently in the chest with a finger the size of a semi, yet even that gentle touch was enough to send him sprawling backwards with a surprised shout. “You’d do best to get used to your new situation, Gage. It’s not going to get any better until you accept it and start understanding who really runs the show around here. Because it’s not you. Since the time you saw me, it wasn’t.”

The other shape was beginning to stir. As it sat up, Gage noticed with dread that it was none other than Nisha, leader of the Disciples, the worst person he could be trapped here with. He hadn’t recognized her without her helmet or armor; she was dressed only in the same sort of dirty off-white rags that everyone else in this world wore if they couldn’t find anything else. True, she was his size, too, so at least he wasn’t dealing with a Nisha big enough to squish him effortlessly with the tip of her thumb, but she had made her hatred for him apparent many times, and whatever sick ploy the wastelander had definitely taken that into account.

“Good morning, Nisha,” the wastelander purred.

Nisha froze mid-move. Her eyes traveled from Gage, who she had been staring daggers at the second she saw him there, to the wastelander, high above her, like a god in the clouds. The wastelander waved two fingers right to left in greeting.

“What the_ fuck,_” said Nisha.

“Oh, you sound even cuter than my darling Porter,” the wastelander said. One hand traveled down to what Gage would assume was her waistband — everything below her chest was obscured by the counter he now realized they were on — and her lips parted slightly as she pleasured herself.

Nisha, who was usually so composed, smooth and deadly like a python, was screaming obscenities at the wastelander for daring to get herself off on their predicament, letting every threat she had fly, because unlike Gage, she hadn’t grasped the powerlessness they were dealing with yet.

“Oh, my,” said the wastelander. “Sounds like someone needs to learn a lesson about who’s the one in control here.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Nisha disappeared.

Gage blinked at the spot she’d been. When he really focused, he could see it wasn’t that she had disappeared, but rather that she had shrunk again — she was no bigger than an insect to him, and certainly nothing more than a black dot smaller than the one on the top of a lowercase ‘i’ to the wastelander, if not completely invisible.

The wastelander grinned, and Gage could see her speed up her masturbating. “Oh, that’s so fucking hot. She is so. Fucking. Small.” Noticing Gage’s panicked look, she said, “Don’t worry, darling. As long as you’re a good boy, you won’t get any smaller than that. After all, I wouldn’t want to lose you. Now can you do me a favor and figure out if Nisha is ready to behave?”

Unsure of what else he was supposed to do, Gage got to his hands and knees and crawled over to the spot Nisha was standing. He could barely see her — he couldn’t see her features well, and her arms and legs looked like little more than the frantic arms and legs of bugs her size. From what he could see, she was hopping up and down indignantly, but it was anyone’s guess what her words were. He could see what the wastelander was talking about, with the squeaky voice — Nisha’s was unintelligible, like he would imagine chipmunks might sound like if they could talk. It would have been hilariously cute if both of them hadn’t been scared shitless.

“Probably a good idea to settle yourself down,” Gage told her, and felt a thrill run through him when he saw her stumble from the bass of _his_ voice. He could see the appeal of being so big; the power was intoxicating. “If you wanna get back to normal size, you’re gonna have to swallow all that pride and do what she says. I know it fuckin’ sucks, but until we find an opening, it’s what we gotta do.” And he _hated_ that he was using the word ‘we’, because he’d rather fuck himself with a cattle brand than work with Nisha, but if he played his cards right, he could use her as a springboard and get himself back to normal size, leaving her in the dust — literally.

“I’m gonna tell her you’re ready to behave,” Gage continued, saying it quietly, even though he knew the wastelander couldn’t hear him, he wanted to be extra careful just in case, because no fucking way was he going to blow this for himself. “But when you get back to my size, you fuckin’ need to play along with her. That’s the only way we’re gettin’ anywhere close to being normal size. You understand me?”

Nisha said something he couldn’t understand, which he was hoping was an answer in the positive. He looked up at the wastelander, who was watching them like the most sadistic god, and gave her a thumbs-up, which he figured was probably the only gesture of his that she could see at his size.

Sure enough, Nisha began to grow before his eyes until she was sitting in front of him, eyes wide, full of hatred, but too surprised and shell-shocked to do much of anything.

“That bitch,” she hissed through her teeth.

Gage stood up. Most people would offer their hand to her in this position, but Raiders were not most people, and Gage was not most Raiders. He crossed his arms and kept his eyes on the wastelander as Nisha got up herself. Craning his neck to look at the wastelander made him dizzy, but it was preferable to sitting here hate-staring at Nisha. “Yeah,” he said, “she’s a bitch. But she’s the bitch that’s in control of us right now, so until we can figure out how to kill her, we need to play nice. Or nice as Raiders can be, anyway, I reckon, which, let’s be honest, ain’t much.”

“Hello, Nisha,” the wastelander hummed. “Good to have you back with us. My darling Gage tells me you’re ready to behave. Is that true?”

The world receded suddenly, and Gage and Nisha found themselves about the size of roaches — big enough to be pinched in between an index finger and thumb without any effort, but small enough not to pose a threat.

“There … I can hear you now. You’ll still have the sweetest little high-pitched voices, but I’ll be able to hear your words. Do you want to answer me, or are you going to keep misbehaving?”

Gage shot Nisha a warning glare.

Nisha took a deep breath, swallowed back her anger, and turned around to look up at the wastelander. She flinched; she hadn’t had as much time to get used to her immensity as Gage had. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “I won’t misbehave! I promise!”

“Hm … there’s something missing from that little admission …” There was a twinkle in her eyes, the kind that didn’t come from harmless mischief but rather the knowledge that she was the complete authority in this situation. Gage had felt it in his own eyes many times during raiding missions. The horrified look on other peoples’ faces as they realized they were outnumbered and outgunned … the absolute defeat in their limbs as they lowered their weapons and surrendered to him and his gang … the adrenaline rush as he put his rifle to their foreheads and blew their brains out, that second of betrayal, where they thought surrender would mean they got to stay alive. It was intoxicating, and he could feel his eyes light up every time it happened.

That was what the wastelander looked like right now. Sadistic, satisfied, and satiated with absolute, uncontested power.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “An apology. Of course. Nisha, don’t you want to say sorry for the way you’ve been acting? It’s been absolutely dreadful, especially when I haven’t even hurt you like you’ve done to so many other people.”

Nisha spat, “Fuck you!”

Instantly, she disappeared. Gage stared at the spot where she’d been standing, but he couldn’t see even a trace of her. How small did she have to be for someone the size of a bug to lose track of her? He looked up at the wastelander, trying to mask his fear. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how pants-shittingly terrified she had the ability to make the Raiders, who were supposed to be the fearless rulers of this hell-blasted continent.

She was looking back at him, and not in a way he’d been expecting. More like … fondness? But not quite. It was a fondness with a catch, a peculiar look that said, _You’re the favorite, but I’ll punish you just as soon as anyone else if you step out of line._ If his status had protected him from the worst of her wrath, he would have felt a lot safer, but with this, he would have to keep himself on his toes.

“So, Gage, darling,” she said, “how are you feeling? Now that I can hear you.”

It was his first time being able to speak to her since he’d walked into the Fizztop Grille. He couldn’t fuck it up. He bit his bottom lip, trying to pick out the words he would use.

“A little concerned,” he decided on saying.

The wastelander’s neck flushed pink with pleasure. “Oh, you sound even more adorable than I imagined, Porter Gage. Ah—” For a second, he thought she might be touching herself again, but she continued on after taking a deep, pleasured breath. “Why are you concerned, little one?”

This one was a little bit easier. “Thought we were s’pose to be a team. Thought I could …” He hesitated. “ … spend some quality time with you. Thought that was what that arrangement was s’pose to be meanin’.”

He could almost see the gears turning in her head. They were both masters at this game — him at weaving the webs, her at catching the prey and wrapping it up so it couldn’t escape. She knew he was manipulating her, and he knew she was the one who held their lives in her hands, but neither of them knew quite how to achieve the exact outcome that they wanted. Nisha was easy, he realized, she was terrified to be powerless, absolutely scared to death of it, so all the wastelander had to do was make it so that she couldn’t fight back. Gage was a little more difficult. His physical power could be taken away, but his silver tongue still remained. And for whatever reason, the wastelander hadn’t seen fit to correct that. She could easily cut his tongue out like this so he wouldn’t be able to speak his sweet nothings to her, but she hadn’t. Why? Entertainment? Making an example of him, in the complete opposite way he would have thought she would have chosen? Showing the other Raiders, because certainly she didn’t plan on keeping her abilities to herself and Nisha and Gage, that if they behaved, she’d treat them well? He couldn’t imagine she cared about any of them that much, though.

Did that mean she cared about him?

He didn’t dare test it. Even if she did care about him, there was no way she did so as anything more than what feelings one would ascribe to a favorite plaything. He was fooling himself if he thought she had fallen head over heels for him, or something equally unlikely.

She reached over again and gently prodded at his crotch. Without his armor, anything approaching his body had him on high-alert, but he stood his ground as the tip of her finger rubbed up against him.

“Quality time …” she repeated.

Gage forced himself not to push her finger away. He wouldn’t have been able to, anyway, but he detested the thought of someone touching his body without him being the instigator. “Yeah,” he said instead. “Can’t very well do that in the position I am now. Kinda disappoints a man who was fixin’ to appreciate …”_ Okay,_ he thought, _don’t lay it on thick, she’ll see right through that, even though she definitely sees through this, too, but maybe it’ll get her thinking, and that’s all I need to do. Sow the seeds. And then be patient._ “ … a beautiful body the size of Salisbury.”

He could see that had affected her, at least, if nothing else. He’d made the right choice referencing her size, letting her know it wasn’t that he wanted to be big again (he did) but that he was interested in a sexual relationship. It wasn’t the in he preferred, but it was an in, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth.

“Salisbury, North Carolina?” she asked idly.

“Yes, ma’am. Sorta place people might look like ants from way up in the air. Ain’t sure what it looked like two hundred years ago, but can’t imagine it was any smaller.”

“And you were looking forward to a … sexual relationship. With someone like that.”

_No._ “Yes, ma’am.”

“Mm.” She took her finger away, and Gage gave a sigh of relief. With that same hand, she circled her left nipple, humming as she did, a tune Gage had never heard, though of course he didn’t listen to much radio, and the radio he did listen to was just the same eight or nine songs over and over again. “That might be an arrangement I would be interested in. One condition, though.”

Well, he’d sold himself this far. In order to get what you want, you usually have to sacrifice a few things along the way. “And what would that be, ma’am?”

Nisha sprung back into existence from the same place she’d disappeared.

“The two of you are going to fight. Whoever wins gets the suggested arrangement. Whoever loses …” A wicked smile curved across her face, like someone had split it open with an axe. “... gets crushed under my thumb.”

The two of them were still only a moment.

Once the truth of their situation kicked in, both of them leapt into action, circling each other like the most ruthless, cunning predators finally having been driven to hunting one another.

Nisha looked terrible. Her hair was soaking wet, and her eyes spoke of someone who had been to see hell and had returned after leaving a piece of them down in it. Gage could only imagine the horrors she had seen, depending on how small she had become. But he held no sympathy for her. He never had, and he wasn’t about to start now. Even when faced with unimaginable terrors, Raiders cared only for their own skins, and that wasn’t about to change for Gage anytime soon. Especially not now, not when he was in the most survival-of-the-fittest situation he’d ever been.

“What’s this fucking arrangement?!” Nisha demanded, and he could hear the horror in her voice, the shock of whatever she’d experienced being pushed aside but not completely disappearing, coming out in places she didn’t want it coming out. She was trying to act tough, trying so, so hard, even though there wasn’t anyone here to impress, but there was only so much trauma a person was able to take.

Gage had to keep in mind that the wastelander could still hear them. He couldn’t let on that this was anything less than a completely genuine request. “If I win, she’ll let me fuck her.”

“Oh, isn’t that just like a man, always fucking thinking with your dick!”

She launched herself at him, and he moved in short of where her tackle would land so that he hit her with his shoulder mid-air, knocking the wind out of her and sending her sprawling, taking big gulps of air, clawing at her ribs. She may have been a good fight with weapons, but when it came down to brute strength, he had the advantage.

“And what … if … _I_ … win … huh?” Nisha gasped from the ground.

“I’d wager you’d be the one who got to fuck her,” Gage said. “But you don’t need to worry about it. Because it’s not going to happen.”

He moved in on her then, while she was still gasping for breath. In one quick motion, he was kneeling over her, his arm pressed against her neck, pinning her head to the ground, where she writhed and hissed silent curses at him until she went limp.

“Won’t be givin’ you no more trouble, boss,” Gage said as he stood up.

“Did you … kill her?”

He could hear the warning in her voice. The threat was unmistakable — do not take the power of life and death away from her, or fucking else.

“Naw,” he answered. “She’s just unconscious. Gives you time to decide if you wanna fuck with her any more before you kill her.”

“Oh, I won’t kill her.”

Gage’s blood ran cold. He’d been counting on getting rid of the permanent nuisance Nisha had proven herself and eliminating someone who hated his guts from the equation. “Wh-What?”

“Yup. Just testing the two of you, seeing how far you’ll go for something you want. In Nisha’s case, she’d do anything to stay alive, and also to kill you. She just wouldn’t do it in a place where it would have negative consequences for her. But if I put her somewhere secret, where no one would know what had happened to you …” She licked her lips. “Delicious information. And good to know she’s not much of a fight without any weapons.”

“She’s older,” Gage said, still trying to wrap his head around the fact he’d been played again. What had he thought? That the wastelander hated Nisha as much as he did? That she’d been looking for a way to eliminate her, too? He understood now that he’d been projecting on her, assuming she operated on the same wavelength as him, when that wasn’t the truth at all. He’d been judging her actions according to his own thought processes, whereas she shared a few qualities but otherwise was entirely different, someone unpredictable and dangerous, someone who not only had the upper hand in their little game, but had invented the game itself and was playing by her own house rules. “She ain’t the fighter she used to be. Not without a blade, anyway.” He looked up at her, into that vicious grin and those bloodthirsty eyes. “What happens now, boss?”

He barely had time to utter a ridiculous, high-pitched squeak as she pinched him between her finger and thumb and lifted him into the air. She watched him flail ridiculously as she dangled him in front of her face.

“Now,” she said, “the fun begins.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lemme know what you think! And if there’s anything else (that’s not feet or other nasty shit) that you wanna see. Peace.


End file.
